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0 pointsoptionalsquid2y ago0 comments

You frequently see this kind of reasoning in medical quackery:

> Butt-candling[1] must work, just look all these happy customers!

But history is replete with ineffective or downright harmful treatments being popular long after the evidence showed them to be ineffective or harmful. Homeopathy is a prime example of this, seeing as those concoctions contain either no active ingredients or (in cases of low dilutions still labeled "homeopathic") contain ingredients picked based on notions of sympathetic magic ("like cures like").

[1] A hopefully fictional example.

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jakear2y ago

This is a perfect example. In the real world, some placebos work. You take them, believe that they will work, and they do. Fantastic! Your problem has been solved, you share your story with friend(s), the cure spreads based on how well it works for them.

It's only in academia that they must instead work in a sterile environment that some person who has never stepped foot off a school campus thinks is "more authentic" for them to be seen as legitimate.

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